Trial for man charged in attempted rape

Updated 9:06 pm, Wednesday, December 19, 2012

STAMFORD -- The trial of a man who police said got part of his tongue bitten off during an attempted rape outside a downtown church last year started Wednesday with the 56-year-old alleged victim taking the stand.

The Stamford woman said she was walking between St. John the Evangelist's rectory and church on Atlantic Street and was admiring stained glass windows on the night of June 23, 2011, when Gerard Landon, 47, of Clinton Avenue approached her.

In her testimony, she said Landon asked her what she was doing at the church. When she said she was praying, he responded: "God is beautiful.

"Then he asked me for a hug," said the woman, explaining hugs are often exchanged at the church.

She gave Landon a hug, but he wouldn't let go and began kissing her face and making groaning sounds, she said while being questioned by Senior Assistant State's Attorney Maureen Ornowsky.

He then pushed her down and began groping her breasts and trying to pull off her blouse and unbutton her pants, she said. At one point, she bit one of his cheeks.

The woman said she began screaming for help, but Landon kept kissing her and she bit his tongue when he put it in her mouth.

As she described the attack Landon, who was dressed in a baggy prison outfit, looked on without expression.

Landon has been held on $550,000 bond at the Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown since his arrest a day after the incident. He is charged with attempted first-degree sexual assault, unlawful restraint and fourth-degree sexual assault.

When she again screamed for help, the woman said Landon put his tongue in her mouth again, but this time she bit down hard and spit out part of Landon's tongue.

Landon then began choking her before walking away, she said. Police found part of his tongue near the spot where the woman said she was attacked.

Landon's case is being tried by Judge Richard Comerford, who is to decide whether he is not guilty by reason of insanity, as asserted by his public defender, Howard Ehring.

Ornowsky also called two police officers to the witness stand, who helped apprehend Landon after he allegedly sexually assaulted two other women and showed up at a chiropractor's office near the Police Department asking for help with his bleeding tongue.

As his only defense witness, Ehring called Dr. Justin Schechter, a Stamford psychiatrist, to testify about Landon's mental state at the time of the attempted rape.

Schechter recently testified in the murder trial of Aaron Ramsey, 23, who was accused in late May of brutally beating his 73-year-old father to death in Wilton. Ramsey was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

During his testimony Wednesday, Schechter said from July 1991 until his arrest, Landon had been treated at the Dubois Center, an out-patient mental clinic, for paranoid delusions and auditory and visual hallucinations.

Landon was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell what is real and to think clearly, Schechter said.

According to his research, and in spending a little over four hours with Landon, Schechter said Landon was not taking prescribed medication, including three anti-psychotic drugs.

A day before the attack, Landon reportedly was at the Dubois Center acting incoherently, mumbling and exhibiting elements of psychosis. The center called for police to help, but Landon left before they arrived, Schechter said.

The psychiatrist said Landon also displayed hyper-sexual behavior that leads him to act inappropriately with women.

At the end of his testimony, Schechter said he believes Landon's schizophrenia made him unable to understand the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his behavior to the requirements of the law.

With the trial concluding the same day, Ehring said Comerford is expected to issue a verdict during the first week of January.